What a weekend!!!!

This past weekend had its highs and lows, for sure...

I'll start with Friday night. I went to HQ and met Lizzy's parents before making more calls. We stopped around eight pm for the debate. For that, we all went to the Brew just down the street from HQ. Watching the debate was interesting, that's for sure. Obama was confident in his answers, and McCain wouldn't make eye contact with anyone, least of all Obama. He was also condescending in his remarks. I think public opinion is that Obama did the best in this debate. Now we're just waiting for the Veep candidates' debate, which will be Thursday. Once again, we're all going to converge on the Brew for the action. =)

After the debate, Lizzy took me home. During the ride, Melissa called. She and I gabbed long after Lizzy dropped me off. I can talk to her about the work I do as an intern for the Obama campaign not worry about being labeled a liberal. Melissa knows the reasons I'm so involved. She understands where I'm coming from.

So I went to bed Friday night in a good mood. I was planning on working a few hours at HQ on Saturday before going home to finish packing for the overnight trip to Iowa City. Unfortunately I was in for a nasty surprise.

I woke up Saturday morning to find that someone had vandalized our front yard and had taken the Obama/Biden yard sign I had put there and threw it away into the neighbor's yard. Whoever had done this had even bent the wire rods. Mom told me not to stress about it; that she could fix it. But that really wasn't the point. The point is that I have the right to show my support for a candidate by having a yard sign on my property and that nobody, NOBODY should be able to take that away from me!

I called Lizzy to let her know what had happened. Even she thought it wasn't cool at all. But it only strengthened my resolve to not let whoever had done it have their way and I went to work for three hours. After that, I came home and got ready for the trip to Iowa City. The game plan was that I would be up there to perform "The Ten Virgins" and then I would stay up there for the Relief Society General Broadcast and spend the night with Melissa at her place.

The performance went perfectly. The other girls and I had our lines down pat. Not bad for the lasses who'd only gotten their scripts a couple of weeks ago. I had a lot of fun working on it.

The broadcast was exactly what I needed. I sat with Melissa and her sister and we listened to the talks. The one that really stuck out for me was President Uchtdorf's talk, especially the part where he told us that we should never find anything lacking in ourselves, never put ourselves down. After the broadcast, Melissa and I talked about that at length in the car. She won't ever let me get down on myself again.

Since we'd only snacked and were famished, we stopped at Hy-Vee and did some grocery shopping. Just as we were leaving, Jeremy called, wanting to come over and so we invited him over for dinner, a late dinner, but it was still dinner. Once he got there, he helped us in preparing dinner, and I had a chance to share with him what I had learned from working on "The Ten Virgins": that if I don't use the gifts I've been given the way they're intended and/or to glorify my Heavenly Father, what's the use of having them. I had also learned that being a loyal friend can be a fault if that loyalty supercedes my loyalty to my Father in Heaven.

After dinner, we played one game and then Jeremy headed home, leaving Melissa and me to get ready for bed and gab a little more. I love her so much. She's like a sister to me.

Amid all of this, I had been trying to ignore the fact that my body was run down. But yesterday morning, I couldn't really ignore it any longer. I woke up feeling warm, slightly feverish, and with body aches that I could barely handle. Melissa even noticed that I was running a temperature. So I called Josh (my new home teacher) while I was still at her house and asked if he'd be able to give me a priesthood blessing after church. He was able to, and I went back home to Muscatine with the faith I'd be feeling better before long.

I'm actually feeling better now. I had a lousy day at work and ended up leaving early today. But after a nap and an evening in, I'll be going back tomorrow bright and early at nine am.

Slan go foill...